*quick note: this entry has been copied from another category before this one was made. This is Mother’s story of how we came to be together, so I decided to share it here, where Mother has coded a new page just for me! Stay tuned for my many adventures!
A while ago, I downloaded a little game called TREAT.
The idea is pretty simple: you virtually foster real dogs who are actually living in shelters. You feed them, keep up with their care, send them real packages, help them earn wellness badges, and eventually celebrate when they get rescued.
I have a whole collection of dogs in there. I’ve sent food. I’ve completed missions. I’ve watched dogs I’ve cared for get adopted and disappear from my little virtual shelter because somebody, somewhere, took them home.
That was supposed to be the arrangement.
Then there was Glacier.
A beautiful white girl at Partners for Pets in Marianna, Florida.
I kept her at 100%. I sent her packages. I watched her. I worried about her. I contacted the shelter.
And somewhere along the way, I stopped waiting for someone to rescue my virtual foster dog and started wondering why the hell I wasn’t the someone.
So I applied.
There was some distance involved—Partners for Pets is about six hours from us—and there were logistics to figure out. But Halle and the people at Partners for Pets worked with us, arrangements were made, my application was approved, and the little white dog I’d been staring at on my screen suddenly wasn’t waiting for some hypothetical person anymore.
She was waiting for me.
And Glacier wasn’t going to be Glacier much longer.
Her name was going to be Gladys.
A Couple Days to Go
A couple of days before Gotcha Day, Halle sent me a picture.
Gladys was all cleaned up, sitting there with her huge happy face, looking for all the world like somebody had already informed her that something good was coming.
That picture hit differently.
This wasn’t me looking at her profile in TREAT anymore.
This was my dog.
Almost.
After weeks of all the phone calls, messages, packages, waiting, hoping and planning, we were down to days.
A couple more days, baby girl.
I’m coming.
The Night Before
The night before we left, I set an alarm for 6:30 in the morning.
I actually named it:
Get up for Gladys!
There are certain alarms you resent before they even go off.
This was not one of them.
The next morning, we were driving across Florida to get the little white dog I met through a fucking phone game.
That night, Gladys slept without me for the last time.
She’s Coming to Me
While we were on our way, Halle sent me a picture from their car.
Gladys was on the road too.
That was one of the strangest and most wonderful parts of the whole thing.
We were driving toward her.
She was driving toward us.
After all those weeks of watching her through a screen, there was now an actual little white dog traveling down a Florida highway toward me.
Of course, Gladys herself looked mildly suspicious about the transportation arrangements.
She had no idea where she was going.
She didn’t know about her new home. She didn’t know about the fenced yard. She didn’t know about Kylo or the cats. She didn’t know about her bed or her toys or the garden or all the people waiting to love the absolute shit out of her.
She didn’t know she would never have to wonder where home was again.
But I did.
And Then We Discovered the Underbite
A little while later, Halle sent another picture.
This time Gladys was staring directly into the camera with one tiny tooth sticking out.
Halle’s accompanying message:
“I cannot deal 😭”
Neither could I.
Then came another message:
“Her underbite is having me crack up 😂”
And thus, before I had even physically acquired my dog, I learned something extremely important about her.
Gladys has a fucking underbite.
More specifically, she has a tiny tooth that occasionally seems to report for duty while the rest of the department remains off shift.
This somehow improved an already perfect dog.
She was sitting there looking completely serious while the humans transporting and receiving her were losing their minds over her face.
Ma’am.
Your tooth is out.
We can all see it.
Gotcha
And then there she was.
My Gladys.
Not a picture Halle sent me.
Not a dog on my screen.
Not Glacier. Not Tater. Not the dog I kept at 100% in TREAT while telling myself I was virtually fostering her until somebody rescued her.
Gladys. My dog.
I finally got my hands on her.
And she is everything.
She’s goofy and beautiful and affectionate, and she has the most magnificent underbite I’ve ever seen. She smiles with her entire face. She leaned into me for kisses like we’d already agreed somewhere along the way that I belonged to her.
We took pictures together by the water before we left. At first she was still taking everything in—new smells, new people, new surroundings, new everything.
And then came the pink spiked collar.
Because obviously.
My sweet white rescue dog required approximately five minutes to transform into a tiny punk-rock Florida bitch.
Gladys had officially arrived.
The Ride Home
Once we got into Mina, she sat beside me smiling, panting and looking around.
Then she climbed into my lap.
And eventually, after everything this girl has been through, she fell asleep.
Head against me.
Eyes closed.
Whole body stretched across my lap.
Safe enough to sleep.
That one got me.
For weeks, I’d been trying to get to her.
Today, I finally did.
Gotcha, Gladys.
You never have to wait for me again.
Home
And then we finally brought her through the door.
There is something very different about bringing home a dog you’ve already loved for weeks.
She’d never been inside this house before.
But I’d already imagined her here a hundred times.
Now she could actually explore it.
She found the giant comfortable dog bed and settled herself into it like perhaps she’d been expecting this level of accommodation all along.
Which would have been an incredibly peaceful little scene…
…if not for the orange face peering through the curtains.
The Cats Have Been Notified
Tomalina discovered the situation.
No formal introduction was required.
There was only surveillance.
Gladys was stretched out on the bed, trying to relax in her brand-new house, while Tomalina materialized in a gap between the curtains and stared down at her like a Victorian widow who had just discovered her husband returned from sea with another woman.
Gladys knew she was being watched.
Tomalina knew Gladys knew.
No hostilities commenced.
No diplomatic relations were established.
We were simply being assessed.
Fair enough.
And Then She Met Maisie
Gladys’s first evening home also included an inspection by the smallest member of the family.
Maisie took this responsibility very seriously.
First came careful observation.
Then nose examination.
Then face touching.
And eventually Maisie simply grabbed Gladys’s entire head with both hands.
Gladys accepted this remarkable breach of personal space with patience, periodically looking toward the adults as though somebody might explain exactly what sort of tiny bald creature we’d allowed to manhandle her.
Maisie required no explanation whatsoever.
Big white dog.
Soft ears.
Excellent face.
Approved.
Watching those two together on Gladys’s very first night home felt like the final little piece clicking into place.
This Is What TREAT Did
I’ve shared TREAT before, and I’m not sure anybody paid much attention.
It’s a game. I get it.
It looks like you’re feeding little digital dogs on your phone.
Except they’re not digital dogs.
They’re real dogs sitting in real shelters.
The food, treats, toys and care are real. The shelters are real. The dogs waiting for homes are real.
And Gladys is real.
I found her because of TREAT.
Partners for Pets cared for her in Marianna. Halle and the people there helped us work through the logistics of getting a dog from six hours away into my arms. TREAT put her face in front of me in the first place.
And then a funny thing happened.
I was supposed to help take care of a shelter dog until somebody rescued her.
Turns out I was somebody.
Tonight, the dog I used to check on through my phone is sleeping in my house.
She has a family.
She has Kylo, whether Kylo currently appreciates that fact or not.
She has cats conducting covert surveillance.
She has a baby who has already grabbed her by the face.
She has a pink spiked collar.
She has that glorious fucking underbite.
And she has me.
Update: My New Coworker
And by the next day, Gladys had already figured out where she wanted to be while I worked.
Under my desk.
I put a blanket down for her, and apparently that’s that.
Yesterday she was a shelter dog five hours away.
Today she sleeps underneath my desk while I work, close enough that all I have to do is reach down to touch her.
The cats have also upgraded their surveillance operation. They now observe the new arrival from directly above, because apparently subtlety has been abandoned.
Gladys doesn’t seem particularly concerned.
She curls up on her blanket beneath me and sleeps.
Maybe that’s the part of Gotcha Day I wanted most and didn’t even know how to picture yet.
Not the drive.
Not the handoff.
Not the pink spiked collar or the photographs or even that first ride home.
The ordinary part.
My dog asleep under my desk while I work.
She’s not waiting anymore.
She’s just home.
Welcome home, Gladys.
You were worth every mile. ❤️🐾
Gladys Gotcha Day: Oct 4, 2026
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